Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Sean Harris, Joel Edgerton, Ewen Leslie, Jada Alberts
Intro:
… a solid bit of blue-collar crime drama, boosted by creative film craft and a willingness to dig its claws into character psychology.
Inspired by the real-life sting operation to catch the murderer of Daniel Morcombe, the latest feature from writer/director Thomas M. Wright (Acute Misfortune) represents a familiar aspect of Australian output. Gritty, morally complicated, no-holds-barred dramatisations of Australia’s blood-splattered history with the criminal element; it’s basically a national genre. It’s also something production collective Blue-Tongue Films has ample experience with, having given David Michôd and the Edgerton brothers room to create entries like The Square, Animal Kingdom, and Felony, with The Stranger safely taking its place among their finer efforts.
Brit Sean Harris as Henry Teague, the focus of the sting in question, works so naturally with the local vernacular as to be genuinely impressive… but he might be a little too low-key for what the story requires of him. To compare it with his best-known credit, as Solomon Lane in the Mission: Impossible film series, his soft-spoken demeanour is closer to the unassuming air of Rogue Nation than the quiet-but-dangerous vibe of Fallout, and considering what the character is being investigated for, that’s not necessarily the right fit for this.
Thankfully, he’s balanced out by Joel Edgerton as Mark, the man doing the stinging, who brings back that Felony flair as the honourable man suffering from the mental strain of what he must do to do the right thing.
The Stranger large exists to turn intellectual scar tissue into tangible audiovisual texture. Wright’s direction combined with Sam Chiplin’s cinematography enshrouds the frame with as much darkened obscurity as the inside of Mark’s head, letting the shadows create the atmosphere. Additionally, the Glass House Mountains provide a real sense of foreboding, along with a recurring cloud of black smoke that wafts and billows while Oliver Coates’ electronic soundtrack rumbles and snarls behind it. The sound design here has real brains to it too, particularly in a few driving scenes where it switches from the conversation as heard by the characters inside, and as heard by the surveillance bugs; for a film all about the intrigue, it does wonders.
As a result of all this, the film ends up being at its strongest when it sticks to the purely psychological edges of the story, laying bare how far Mark is pushing himself to make this all work out. Alas, the twisty-turny plotting and non-linear chronology deaden some of the impact of the events as they happen, not to mention taking the main leitmotif of shadows a bit too far narratively.
The Stranger is a solid bit of blue-collar crime drama, boosted by creative film craft and a willingness to dig its claws into character psychology. It doesn’t say anything particularly new within its based-on-real-tragedy framework, and its narrative structure occasionally wobbles between complex and just confusing, but for those with a liking for the bleaker side of cinema, this is most certainly where you’ll find it.
